Single Speaker Demonstrations

[SteveTheShadow]

Why this came into my head, I don't know, but I never could understand what the hell that was about.
I agree that doing away with the wall of speakers through a comparator box was a good thing, but a telephone in the room causing worse sound?

Single Speaker Demonstration rooms seemed to be the preserve of Linn Naim dealerships, when I used to use shop bought hi fi. That very fact makes me suspect it was marketing deliberately designed to make speaker comparisons a pain in the arse and put pressure on you as the buyer to go with the ones the dealer wanted to sell you.

Anyone else had to sit through an interminable dem as the dealer huffed and puffed, heaving speakers in and out of the dem room, so that they either bought the first one they listened to or just left the shop.

I bought three sets of speakers by this method. I don't have any of them now.

[guydarryl]

All part of sales - it makes the process feel special and therefore the customer feels exclusive/special.

If I remember the argument correctly; another transducer in the room would vibrate in sympathy and therefore pollute the sound. Well, logically listeners should get rid of windows (very good at vibrating in time to the sound).

But, I do have sympathy with the idea of not having a transducer (TV for example) between the speakers

[_D_S_J_R_]

I swear to you chaps that it ISN'T bollox. It's an audible fact that loads of speakers in a row will affect the pair that's playing to a greater or lesser extent.

Shortly before I left my penultimate audio industry retail job, our 'single-speaker dem room' was converted to house all the non-B&O gear as B&O were increasingly forcing dealers down the 'franchise' route. The extra shelving fitted, helped the one pair we started with as I suspect that reflections in the room were being broken up. Adding a second pair didn't make much difference, but adding a third did degrade the sound of the pair playing. More than this killed the sound where quality was concerned (we had eight or nine pairs at once) and even pulling the pair to be played forwards didn't help.

Currently in the workroom I have two pairs of speakers. Maybe it's the conditioning, but the unused pair (sealed boxes) face tight to the wall...

As always with these kind of subjective differences, many of 'us' played it to extremes, some dealers banning digital watches or somesuch from demo rooms. But the thought was correct if done in moderation - like a lot of things

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

There is also a technical reason that I will try to explain to you (I am sure some wannabe Guru on the other forums will poach it as it has never been put in public before to my knowledge). There were problem with multi speaker dems as Dave says but the major problem was with comparators. Comparators switched the positive path and maintained a common negative path as that was earth. Signal is there whether you want it or not as it is part of the circuit. Obviously the speaker without the positive connection didn't transduce as they didn't have a circuit, but the negative fed around them and put signal back into the input time delayed i.e. out of phase musically with the positive phase. Result bad music. What seems is not realised is a loudspeaker is also microphone, they are the same thing = transducers, but in opposite usage. Wire a spare loudspeaker up as a microphone into a mic input and go and shout at it and your voice will come out of your system, not as efficiently as a properly designed mic but you will hear it. So again THINK about all those speakers in the same room and the signal they are putting back to the comparator. Result more bad music.

Comparators and multi speaker dem rooms especially with speaker shelves crammed with them are a bad thing it wasn't just flat earth bullshit.

[_D_S_J_R_]

Fair enough, but I should add that our little comparator was a shop made jobbie that used four pin XLR's to manually switch amps and speakers (top row speakers, bottom row amps and two short lengths of speaker cable with matching xlr's on to connect each row). In fact, I remember the final insult being each fresh pair of boxes coming in and not connected at all at the time...

The above was nothing compared to the expensive, custom designed and bell-wire laden (DIN speaker plugs too) relay switched electronic comparators we had in the mid 70's at KJ, which really did screw around with things

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

It is the KJ type thing that was the source of the single speaker thing. I am not sure if it was Ivor or Julien who said how can you sell my products through one of those things and rightly - not *everything* flat earth was bullshit. As you say Dave a couple of pair of speakers is neither here nor there.

[_D_S_J_R_]

I was first indoctrinated with this up at Linn's HQ in Drakemire Drive back in May 1981, with my mate Richard (who's back at KJ part time after decades away) and Naim's Paul Stevenson with then wife Sally of Chord Co. notoriety. Securing the speakers better to the floor and single speaker dems, bringing a Kan into a room with just Isobariks playing and showing what it was that made us feel the LP12 sounded clearer than a Planar 3 - the beginnings of the tune dem (I never got the rhythm bit as some have). I got really seriously upset I remember, because the now late powers that be at KJ Wigmore St were so resistant to any sort of change.

I do owe Linn this much... I always sang along to favourite songs (still do, ask the Doc ), and the 'tune-dem' focused what I instinctively did. NVA gear 'plays tunes' effortlessly IMO, some other gear I know well needs a little more work to sing, but does eventually and some other ss amps and 'European 'HiFi' speakers' make a total dog's dinner of the task of reproducing music to a realistic level of suspending disbelief - IMO.

SOME of the things I learned and discovered at Linn work with ANY good bit of audio gear, so I'm happy I did the best I could.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

But you still sold what you were told to, or only given a limited range to choose from. Just think if the Glasgow bastard brainwashers hadn't managed to control the industry how much more choice there would have been.

[guydarryl]

I wasn't thinking of comparators, or other speakers being plugged in to the system. I seem to remember the Linn? (perhaps Naim, it was quite a few years ago) thing referred to having any transducer in the same room. I remember wondering at the time whether this was why some people preferred mono

[Lindsayt]

There's a big difference between listening to speakers sitting amongst a whole wall of speakers wired via a comparator and listening to a single pair of speakers with a telephone at the far end of the room.


I sometimes wonder if Linn lost a speaker bake-off and then blamed it on a telephone, or TV or fire alarm being in the same room? It's the sort of slippery eel type marketing tactic that they'd use. Similar to the LP12 being beaten in a bake-off and blaming that on the LP12 needing a service from a dealer.